TEN Arquitectos/ Enrique Norten

Over the course of decades, New York's industrial and manufacturing areas have evolved into residential quarters. Located at the fulcrum of Tribeca's four historic districts, 1 York is a new artifact of the city's constant reinvention. A simple, nineteenth-century brick building, which takes up a small city block, supplies the starting point for this new residential structure. On the exterior, the scale and features of the old building are retained, preserving the still industrial texture of the area. On the interior, the solid masses are cut and carved, and a prismatic, ethereal insertion transforms the old building from within and adds seven floors. Like a quartz vein running through stone, the addition both fractures and fuses the building, illuminating and clarifying its dense materiality.